I'll Stop the World, page 6
His mother rolled her eyes, false lashes fluttering against her brightly painted lids like a perturbed butterfly. “That’s fine,” she said absently, turning her full attention back to the dresser. She opened a drawer, then slammed it with a grunt of disgust. “Ugh, it’s not here.” She glanced over her shoulder and seemed surprised to realize Karl was still there. “Do you know where my gold-and-pearl brooch is?”
Karl shrugged. He should’ve known she wouldn’t ask him why he didn’t want to go. He didn’t know why he’d thought she might.
“If you don’t find it, will you stay home?” he asked hopefully.
She shook her head, sending her earrings swinging. “Of course not,” she said absently, then looked at him and sighed. “Why don’t you invite a friend over? You can have a sleepover. Play your video game or something.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Karl said, his shoulders drooping. What friend? he wanted to ask, but he knew she wouldn’t be able to answer. The second controller for the brand-new video game system that his parents had given him for his birthday, months ahead of its official release, still sat in its original box, unused. Neither of his parents had noticed.
His mother closed her eyes, crimson-slicked lips moving as she whispered to herself, walking through the last time she could remember wearing the brooch.
Karl backed out of his parents’ room and headed downstairs, hands jammed in his pockets. His dad sat on the living room couch in his suit, a Time magazine open on his lap. He glanced up as Karl walked past. “Your mom almost ready?”
“She can’t find her brooch.”
His father groaned, checking his watch before tossing the magazine onto the coffee table. “Moira, we’re going to be late.”
Her frantic voice drifted down from above. “Just another minute.”
“Oh, for the love of . . .” He stomped toward the stairs. “Just pick a different one.”
Karl waited for a few seconds, listening to his parents argue above him, before slipping out the front door. Headlights were approaching up their long drive—probably Charlene coming home—so he ducked around the side of the house instead of cutting in front of the garage, disappearing into the thick trees that lined their property.
He pressed into the shadows, keeping his breathing soft as his sister parked her car and climbed out. Karl was one of the smallest kids in his seventh-grade class, including the girls. It made running away hard, but hiding easy. Charlene didn’t even glance his way as she walked inside, humming wordlessly along to whatever rock tune leaked from the headphones draped around her neck.
After hearing the front door shut, Karl sank deeper into the woods, navigating more by instinct than by sight. He’d discovered the twisted tree by accident that summer, but in the months since he’d found it, he’d walked the path between his house and the tree more times than he could count, at all times of day and night. By now, he could probably get there even with no light at all.
It was about a ten-minute walk to the tree. He didn’t know how far that made it distance-wise; it felt far away from everything, and that’s what was important. The moon was full that evening, casting the canvas walls of his fort in a soft glow. Karl swept aside the flap covering the entrance and stepped inside.
It wasn’t big, his fort. The twisted tree grew out of the ground like a question mark, its limbs twining out and up over his head. He’d built the fort off it, piece by piece, out of materials he’d found in all sorts of places. A canvas drop cloth from the back of their handyman’s pickup truck. A length of clothesline he’d found coiled in the laundry room. A short wooden bookshelf holding empty paint cans in the back of the garage. A kitchen chair from the set his mom had put out in the driveway to donate to the church yard sale.
That one had been particularly thrilling. He’d sat in the kitchen eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich while his mom paced back and forth, phone pressed to her ear, assuring the volunteer on the other end over and over that yes, she was sure she’d set out all eight chairs to be picked up, and no, she didn’t have one still in the house, and no, she didn’t miscount; What sort of dining set comes with only seven chairs? and What are you, some sort of imbecile?
Karl sank into the pilfered chair, plucking a flashlight from where it hung off a knot on the side of the tree. He flicked it on just long enough to find the book of matches on the shelf, which he used to light the row of pocket-size candles he’d smuggled, one by one, out of the Food Mart.
He reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out his mother’s brooch. After turning it over in his hands, running his fingers across the smooth pearls, he placed it on the shelf beside his other treasures—pieces taken from his mother’s jewelry box, his sister’s nightstand, his father’s tray of gleaming cuff links—and watched the flickering candlelight reflect dimly off their shining surfaces.
SATURDAY
Chapter Nine
JUSTIN
“Are you still awake?” Alyssa whispers, hovering between the kitchen and the living room.
I look up over my phone, my feet jammed up against the armrest of the too-short couch. The lock screen tells me it’s well after midnight.
“Yeah.”
I gave up on sleep a while ago; between the cramped couch and Stan’s voice echoing in my head, screaming about how worthless I am, relaxation didn’t feel like a thing my body was capable of. So instead I’ve just been mindlessly scrolling on my phone, hoping I’ll eventually pass out from boredom.
Alyssa pads over to the couch in bare feet, clutching two mugs to her chest. I scoot into a sitting position, leaving my legs stretched out under the blankets, and she sits on my feet, handing me one of the mugs. I give it a sniff and raise an eyebrow. “Hot cocoa? What are we, twelve?”
She shrugs. “There’s no age limit on deliciousness, Jay.”
“Fair enough,” I say, raising my mug in a faux toast before taking a sip. It’s a slightly awkward drinking situation; she’s given me a mug shaped like Appa, the giant white, furry creature from Avatar: The Last Airbender. But I manage.
“Why are you still up?” I ask, keeping my voice low. Sitting here in the dark, it feels like quiet is the only option.
She sighs, holding her own mug just under her chin. Hers is printed with a picture of that distracted-guy meme, where the girl with him is “starting the day” and the one walking past is “more coffee.” “I just keep thinking about what Stan said this afternoon.” She tilts her head to look at me, dark curls tumbling over her shoulders. “Are you really okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Justin.” She pivots, tucking her feet under the blanket so that they touch mine. Her toes are like ice, but heat radiates up my legs. “You can tell me, you know.”
I sigh, buying myself some time with slow sips of hot chocolate. “I guess I just . . . I don’t know, I knew he didn’t like me, but . . .”
“That was really awful, what he said.”
“I thought you liked Stan.”
“I like you more.” She pats my legs through the blanket, giving my ankle a squeeze, and smiles.
I could drown in that smile.
“I’m really glad he didn’t do any of those things he said,” she says softly. “I’d miss you if you weren’t here.”
“You wouldn’t know me to miss me.”
“I think I’d know something was missing anyway. Even if I didn’t know it was you. Something wouldn’t feel right.”
“That’s how I feel all the time,” I say. “Like I took a wrong turn somewhere, and now everything about me is just . . . off. That thing Stan said about me being broken from the beginning, I think . . . maybe he’s right.”
I don’t normally voice my dark thoughts out loud, but there’s something about sitting here with Alyssa in the middle of the night that brings them closer to the surface. Harder to hold in. Plus, between the citizenship-award assembly and the internship applications and Stan’s bizarre tirade, today has made it abundantly clear that whatever I’m supposed to be at this point in my life, I’m not it. Like I came from the factory defective.
Alyssa adjusts her position again, pushing my legs to the side and tucking her body into mine to rest her head against my shoulder. My arm goes around her automatically, fitting her into my side like a missing piece. She’s always been a cuddler, especially when she’s tired. I used to think it meant something, but now I know better—or at least, I try to know better. Her hair tickles my nose, and I smooth it down as best I can with my free hand, resisting my desire to leave my fingers buried in her soft curls.
“I wish you didn’t think like that about yourself,” she whispers, her voice vibrating softly against my chest.
“I can’t help it.”
“I don’t think you’re broken.”
“I know.” I rest my chin on the top of her head. “What am I going to do when you’re gone next year?”
“I won’t be gone gone. I’ll come home on breaks. And we’ll still talk all the time.”
“Talking isn’t . . . this, though.”
“Yeah.” She sighs, then swivels her head to look up at me. “I’ll miss this, too.”
I have the overwhelming urge to kiss her. Her dark eyes are infinite, her lips slightly parted, so close I catch a whiff of coconut lip balm mixing with the hot cocoa on her breath. She’s right there, just a head tilt away.
Instead, I look up, staring out into the darkness. “That is, until you fall in love with one of your ripped naked models and run away with him,” I say, keeping my voice light. “That’s all art school is, right? Drawing naked people in soft lighting?”
“Oh, for sure. Hundred percent, that’s what it is. And you’re right, once I get my freakishly hot naked boyfriend, I probably won’t even remember your name,” Alyssa says. “But that still leaves at least a couple weeks for me to miss you before I completely forget you exist.”
I smile, trying to ignore the ache in my chest, trying to pretend there’s no truth in our jokes. Maybe it won’t be a hot naked model—although now I won’t be able to get that image out of my head; thanks, brain—but I’ve always known she deserves someone better than me. Someone who will do something with his life. Someone who won’t drag her down like a heavy chain, sinking us both.
I clear my throat, then tug at the hem of her Grey’s Anatomy T-shirt. “But I don’t think you get to be the judge of who is and is not broken, anyway, given your embarrassingly bad taste in pretty much everything.”
She smacks my arm playfully. “Shut up. I like what I like. Don’t media-shame me.”
“I don’t have to shame you; you should already be ashamed.”
“You are such a butt.”
“As long as I’m your favorite butt.”
“Nope. That honor goes to Chris Hemsworth.”
“Wow, I did not need to know that information.”
“Sorry—you sleep at my house, you have to talk about Avenger butts with me. Those are just the rules.”
“Fine. Which Avenger do you think has the worst farts?”
“Gross.”
“You are the one who demanded we talk about Avenger butts.”
“I take it back. You’re the worst.” She groans but doesn’t make any move to extract herself from my side.
Which is fine by me. I would happily stay like this forever.
At some point, we fall asleep, and later, Alyssa drifts back up to her room. Once she’s gone, though, I lie awake, missing her heat, her scent, the steady sound of her breathing.
We are just friends, I remind myself over and over again. Best friends. Bamboo-shoots-under-my-fingernails platonic freaking soulmates, even.
But that is all we are, and all we can ever be.
Chapter Ten
ROSE
“Girls, let’s go!” Diane’s voice rang through the house as Rose and Lisa crowded in front of their shared bathroom mirror, putting the finishing touches on their hair and makeup for the morning’s photo shoot.
Or rather, Lisa was putting on finishing touches. Rose kept starting over, each attempt to make herself presentable even more disappointing than the last.
“Just a minute!” Lisa called down the stairs, leaning close to the mirror to dab at her eye shadow with her finger. Rose watched her sister enviously, wishing she were even half as beautiful. No matter what she tried, or how closely she mimicked what Lisa was doing, she always wound up looking like a kid playing dress-up, while Lisa could’ve stepped straight out of a magazine.
Rose frowned, pulling her ponytail holder free yet again and shaking out her mane of dark hair. She didn’t have the stick-straight obsidian hair of her father’s side of the family; her mother’s Irish genes had thickened and lightened it just enough to turn it a rich, wavy brown. Sometimes, she appreciated that her hair was just a little bit different from all the other girls at school.
But not today.
“Nothing is working,” Rose whined, sweeping it all onto the top of her head and frowning at the bumps.
“You want me to try?” Lisa asked, fastening her earrings. “I’m pretty much ready.”
“Please,” Rose said gratefully, shifting to stand in front of her sister and handing over her hairbrush.
After her mother’s accident when Rose was five, her father hadn’t paid much attention to Rose’s hair—or anything else, for that matter—and it had grown long and wild, tumbling down her back in thick tangles. It was Lisa’s mother, Diane, who had put a stop to her wild-child phase, inviting her over one day after kindergarten and combing through the nest of knots while Rose and Lisa perched on kitchen chairs, sharing a bowl of potato chips and watching The Price Is Right on their grainy kitchen TV.
Lisa’s dad had come home from work to find them like that. He’d laughed—he was still vibrant and burly back then, barely resembling the gaunt ghost he’d become three years later, toward the end—and said they looked like a set of mismatched twins.
Lisa had frowned and told him that didn’t make any sense. Twins were supposed to match; if they didn’t, they weren’t twins.
He’d just shaken his head and chuckled, letting the subject drop.
Funny how things worked out.
“You remember that game we used to play when we were little?” Rose mused as Lisa tugged at her hair. “‘Teenagers’?”
Lisa laughed. “When we thought we’d be married with kids by fifteen?”
“We were eight. We had no concept of anything.”
“I remember you were always putting your toys in time-out. Just a creepy row of Barbies and Weebles all facing the wall because ‘the children were misbehaving.’”
“I was a weird kid.”
“Weird like a child of the corn.”
Rose laughed, shaking her head at the memory. “Didn’t you decide you were going to marry the mailman or something? I remember you kept saying how you loved a man in uniform.”
“No, even worse, it was the garbageman.” Lisa groaned. “I think I must have heard someone say it on TV once? I don’t know.”
“Hmm, should we tell Shawn he needs to borrow a pair of his dad’s coveralls?” Rose joked.
Lisa’s laugh felt like it came a second too late and a smidge too high, like she was forcing it. But when Rose looked at her in the mirror, Lisa grinned back at her, and Rose wondered whether she was simply losing her ability to read her sister’s mood. Was all the time they’d been spending apart lately turning them into strangers?
Lisa gave Rose’s head a friendly pat. “All done,” she proclaimed, stepping back to examine her handiwork. Rose turned her head from side to side, admiring the way Lisa had tamed her stubborn waves by weaving them into braids on the sides, then securing everything in the back with a bright-green clip that matched Rose’s dress.
“You’re the best,” Rose said in relief.
“I know,” Lisa said cheerfully.
In the car, their little sister, Emmie, squeezed between Lisa and Rose in the back seat, while Diane and Rose’s dad, Jim, sat up front. As Diane drove, Jim twisted around in his seat to smile at the three of them.
“So, girls,” he said brightly, “just so you know, Veronica will have already placed our order by the time we arrive. We know that’s a little unusual, but she thought it was important to consider the overall look of the table in the photo so that, you know—”
“It’s fine, Dad,” Rose said, saving him the trouble of having to explain, yet again, how closely their family was being scrutinized for this campaign. Everything they were wearing, down to Lisa’s reserved gold hoops and Emmie’s pink hair bow, had been approved by Diane’s campaign manager, Veronica, earlier in the week, and Rose was sure she’d paid a visit to Shawn’s house to sign off on his outfit, too. But it wasn’t just that; they’d been reminded a hundred times to be careful about who they spoke to, where they went after school, what they bought at the grocery store, since they never knew when a reporter might be lurking nearby.
Even Lisa’s friendship with Charlene had briefly been a point of contention, until Diane insisted that no member of her family was going to be forced to give up friends for this campaign. Eventually, Veronica had relented.
Still, none of it seemed fair. Rose doubted that Franklin Gibson and his family spent a quarter as much energy fretting over their every move as the members of the Lewis-Yin household. But when the Stone Lake Gazette once reported that Diane wearing a mismatched pair of macaroni earrings Lisa had made in kindergarten to a school board meeting was “a silent yet pointed indictment of the public school system,” which “begs the question whether even Lewis-Yin herself truly believes in her controversial education plan,” there was no such thing as too careful.
Rose supposed she should be glad no reporters were skulking around the Food Mart yesterday. She could only imagine how they would’ve spun their fundraising efforts for Mrs. Hanley. Local Teens Harass Shoppers in Desperate Cash Grab, perhaps, or maybe, Lewis-Yin Family Caught Soliciting Gifts from Local Businesses.
